Be Devoted Series

Spring Life

Part 4- Be Devoted

Pastor Ryan Akers

Video- Bible Facts- (Sermon Spice)

OWU- Kids lack of desire to learn what they were called to do.- I didn’t begin really digging into the bible until college. When I did I learned just how powerful the words inside these pages are.

It is a timeless book, relevant for all ages. The culture was different, but the problems were all the same. Sin, greed, lust, prostitution, bad marriages, depression, all manners of temptation. Eccl says there is nothing new under the sun and that is why this book is so timeless because the teachings and stories that are brought forth from this book were designed by God to be timeless from creation to final judgment day. And all of it was designed to bring out our hope of redemption through our savior, Jesus Christ.

Written over 1,500 years by 40 authors in 3 languages yet has no contradictions.

World’s first printed book and despite the world’s continuing desires to discredit and destroy this book it continues today to be the best selling book of all time.

Secular scholars love to argue that there is no way this book could be accurate today because it has been copied so many times and because there are no original manuscripts available that it could not possibly be reliable. The undeniable fact is that the scribes who copied the Old Testament over hundreds of years were professionals. They dedicated their lives to accurately copying the original manuscripts.

Scholars have been able to test that accuracy when they discovered the Dead Sea scrolls which contained a complete copy of the book of Isaiah written about 125 years before Christ. That book was 95% word for word identical with today’s Modern Hebrew Bible. The other 5% were spelling changes and clerical errors.

Compared to other ancient manuscripts the bible has over 5,000 complete copies of the New Testament available and over 20,000 partial books available some written within 100 years of the original manuscripts.

In comparison the Iliad comes in 2nd with only 643 manuscripts available and the best of those is 500 years newer than the original text.

Archeological discoveries made today have done nothing but support what the bible claims. Famous archaeologist Nelson Glueck discovered 1,500 ancient sites by simply using the bible as his guide.

Here’s the point, it’s easy to believe that the Bible is just a great work of literature, great history book or even a book of spiritual significance. Jesus believed the Old Testament was God’s Word and the Christian church from it’s earliest years believed the OT and NT were God inspired and all this information leads us to the same conclusion that mankind needs a savior, that savior is found in Jesus the Christ and we, as believers, are to live out our days fulfilling God’s created purpose for us which is to be like Jesus.

This means we must become Disciples of Christ. Disciple literally means “learner”. We are to be devoted to the teachings of Jesus and to God’s Word. Acts 2:42, I John 2:3-6. We are students, God is the teacher, and Jesus is the goal. How can you know how to be a follower of Christ if you never read the Word of God? Being a disciple doesn’t happen overnight. Just like you didn’t graduate high school after attending one day of kindergarten. It takes a lifetime of learning. It takes a lifetime of dedicated study, prayer, failures and victories. It takes a lifetime of listening to God, listening to others who have been there, done that. The learning never ends until we die and we enter into our glorified bodies in Heaven. And really the learning is the fun part.

Many look at reading the bible as a chore. It’s something you just have to do but you don’t want to but you feel guilty if you don’t. So read might read here or there and normally what happens is you read and then when your done you don’t even remember what you just read.

If you want God’s word to have a profound impact on your life then you have to have a total shift in your thinking. There must be a renewing of your mind so that when you do your devotions it no longer is a chore but it becomes more important than air. The bible will become fun to read. As you dig into this book you will discover teachings that will have a profound impact on who you are and who you will become as a person and as a child of God. The more you read and pray the more you will discover the awesome power that is contained in this book. It literally has the words of life. We can’t just say we want to be a good Christian you have to back it up with action. That action is taken when we take the word of God seriously in our daily lives. When it becomes the guide to how we live. Where every time we are struggling in life our first thought becomes, “what does the bible say.”